


The Fillorian Freelancers - Meetings Whenever We Damn Well Want

by merriman



Category: The Magicians - Lev Grossman
Genre: Gen, Jolly Adventures, Misses Clause Challenge, Women Being Awesome, clubs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-22
Updated: 2016-12-22
Packaged: 2018-09-11 01:04:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8947054
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merriman/pseuds/merriman
Summary: Jane, then Plum, then Janet, then Alice. They all want some adventure. If only there were a group for that...





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maesilju](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maesilju/gifts).



> I really wanted to include everyone. I'm just sorry I didn't have time to write more actual adventuring.

**One is One**

With all her mucking around with time, Jane was well-equipped to know when someone else was playing with it. Not that she could do anything when she noticed that something was up. It was like a mild itch in her ears. She'd retreated to her cottage when the land started to disintegrate, relying on the clock tree roots to keep her cottage standing for at least a few more moments. She wasn't about to go leaving it now. Not after all she'd done to save Fillory in the past.

And then it had been over. All of it. Suddenly that itch in her ears was gone and time was right again and somehow the land was whole and the sun was shining in the sky and everything was back to normal but at the same time it was all different. Jane stood in the doorway to her cottage and surveyed the land outside. The clock trees were gone, torn up and not replaced. That was fine. She could always make more. The Dwarves had sent off their big mysterious project - a rocket ship of all things - but she was sure there were some still down in the tunnels. So Jane shut her door and went to the nearest entrance and climbed down. If someone had repaired the land then it stood to reason there'd be someone wanting other things repaired. The Dwarves were excellent at that. 

When Jane reached the first cavern a number of Dwarves were gathered there, discussing what to do now.

"We are the Dwarves Who Stayed," one of them told her. He went by the name of Irontock and he'd taught Jane about some of the most delicate parts of their smallest machinery. "We drew lots," he added. "The Dwarves Who Left will be back."

Jane nodded. Of course they would be, and when they returned it would be a grand story for all of the Dwarves to recount over the years. At the moment, however, there was more pressing business.

"You know, I wouldn't be surprised if the Kings and Queens want their castle back," she told them. "It might be a good idea to remind them who built it in the first place."

In the meantime, Jane would set about checking her cottage and her clocks and her watches and maybe see if any of the clock trees nearby had survived. Then she would make tea. After all, her great niece was in Fillory now, if she didn't miss her guess. Apparently that spell she'd set to detect any of her family in Fillory was still in place. So there was that at least.

**And Then There Were Two**

When the Dwarves Who Stayed arrived to help rebuild Castle Whitespire, two of them had come over to Plum and offered to take her to her great aunt. Apparently they were pals, which was pretty cool really. The Dwarves weren't very talkative, but they were friendly enough and they showed her a little more respect than they seemed to show the actual royalty here. Probably because she was a Chatwin by blood. Plum wasn't about to question it.

So Plum waved goodbye to the Kings and Queens of Fillory, promised she'd be back eventually, and went off with the Dwarves. It wasn't that long a trip, as it turned out, and the Dwarves were good enough company. One of them introduced himself as Skipflint and asked Plum if she might be interested in learning about clockwork. Plum thought back to poor Stoppard from the beginning of this whole adventure and nodded. Stoppard would have loved to learn about clockwork from the Dwarves of Fillory.

"Maybe not now," she told Skipflint. "But yes, definitely."

While the Dwarves headed back down into their tunnels, Plum walked up to the cottage she assumed belonged to Jane Chatwin. It looked somehow perfect and homey and not at all like it had just been through an apocalypse. She was about to knock on the door when it opened and there she was, Plum's long lost Great Aunt Jane. She looked like the sort of aunt Plum had always wanted. She looked like she'd have let Plum stay overnight when her parents were being difficult, or bought the perfect birthday present when everyone else got her school supplies. 

"Plum," Jane said. "Welcome. You're just in time."

"In time for what?" Plum asked, though she was already excited without even knowing what she was excited about.

"Everything," Jane said, smiling. "The Dwarves have told me the entire underground has been shifted around. Do you know what that means, my dear great niece whom I've only just met?"

Plum considered it for a moment, then nodded. "Everything's shifted around topside too, right?"

Jane nodded. "Precisely. Ahh, I had forgotten what it was like for this world to be new. How lovely."

She had started a kettle boiling on her stovetop and Plum took a seat at the kitchen table. 

"I only have one packet of tea," Jane told Plum. "It's weak, but it'll do I suppose. The contents of my larder seem to have disappeared even though the rest of the cottage did not." She set a pale cup of tea in front of Plum, then sat down across from her and sipped at her own.

"So, you're Rupert's granddaughter," Jane said, inspecting Plum now that she wasn't busy making tea. "I can see it. He was a bit of an odd duck, but ultimately he helped out, didn't he. Maybe I should have taken him with me, but then you wouldn't be here, so that's that. Tell me, Plum, are you up for a bit of an adventure?"

"At all times," Plum said, nodding. She normally took her tea strong, with two sugars, but she sipped from her teacup anyhow and was pleasantly surprised at the flavor. Weak, yes, but also floral and sweet and bitter at the same time.

"Fillorian tea," Jane told her. "I only had one cup's worth left, so I split it, but the flavor's still nice, isn't it?"

Plum nodded. "So, what sort of adventure are we talking about?"

"You might have noticed a distinct lack of clock trees," Jane sighed. "Or not, I know you only just got here. They weren't terribly interesting, outside of being a curiosity for most, but they did have a nice little side effect of letting me check in on things all over Fillory. Their root systems were intertwined deep down. So, what say I show you around New Fillory, we get to know the place, I plant some trees, and we do some long overdue family bonding?"

"What do we do for supplies?" Plum asked, looking around the cottage. "Do you have backpacks and things here?"

"Well, we can deal with that on the way," Jane told her. "The Dwarves can help us get started, then we forage. Time to learn how it's done, Plum. Join the family business, as it were."

**Three's a Crowd - Three's Company**

It took all of a month before Janet was bored with the bureaucracy again. Eliot was having a grand time and Josh and Poppy were growing more and more sickeningly adorable with every passing moment, so Janet judged it time for her to take a little break. There were always things that needed doing out in Fillory. Of course, they didn't need to annex anything or fight anyone right now - everyone was too busy rebuilding and making babies - but that didn't mean there was nothing to take her away from the castle.

"Look," she told Eliot. "I've talked to the guys down in the map room and they all agree it's a total shitshow out there. I mean, it's gorgeous, yeah, but it's all changed around. Quentin let the rivers reroute themselves and some of the coastlines are totally different. There are hills where there were valleys. I'm taking a leave of absence and going cartographering."

"That's not a word," Eliot pointed out. But he didn't stop her. He did give her a peck on the cheek and a tolerably brief hug, then some advice on equipment to take and spells to prepare.

Janet's first stop was the Watcherwoman's cottage. She'd had that whole network of trees, after all, and she'd been all over the damn world. But the cottage was empty aside from a whole ton of clocks and a note saying that Jane Chatwin and Plum Purchas had gone traveling and would be back. If anyone had to reach them, the Dwarves could help.

Well. Janet hardly needed the Dwarves to help her find two humans in Fillory. She had spells for things like that. So she cast one: A simple tracking spell that used the teacups set in the sink in Jane's kitchen. Along with her hippogriff, Winterwing, Janet followed their trail for several days. Flying took a lot less time than walking, especially once Janet cast a basic speed enhancement. They caught up with Jane and Plum easily enough several days later, though it was the middle of the night. 

No matter. Janet was too keyed up from the speed spell and took a seat in front of Jane and Plum's campfire. Plum had set up wards, of course, but Janet was able to get through them without waking the two in the tent. Winterwing was worn out by then and settled down for a nap. Janet just stoked the embers of the fire up into something cozier and settled in to wait.

"How'd you get through?" Plum asked when she emerged from the tent in the morning. Janet already had a pot of porridge cooking over the fire and shot her a glare.

"That's 'How'd you get through, your Highness?' to you," she told Plum. "And the answer is that I've got a lot more practice than you and I'm the High Queen of Fillory and I can do what I want."

"Tsk," Jane said as she followed Plum out of the tent. "That sort of attitude is entirely unnecessary, Queen Janet. Now, thank you for joining us and providing breakfast. What might we do for you?"

"Yeah, what might your lowly subjects do for you?" Plum asked as she served herself up a bowl of porridge. "Not that I'm your subject. I'm just visiting."

"You're doing it, actually," Janet told them. "And I would like to do you the honor of joining you."

Plum and Jane traded looks that were so eerily similar, Janet had a brief pang of doubt. They were both Chatwins, after all. Maybe she ought to have left them to do whatever they were doing and found some other adventure to join. Or just gone off on her own.

Then they both shrugged and Janet re-settled herself back into her regal posture. Of course they wanted her to join. She was the fucking High Queen, after all. And if they were heading off into the newly unknown wilds of Fillory 2 (Electric Boogaloo), then she wanted in on it. 

"Meet anything dangerous yet?" Janet asked as she handed Jane a bowl of porridge. There were some considerations to be made for Jane Chatwin. She was in the damn books, after all.

Jane and Plum shared that look again, then both smiled. 

"Oh yes," Plum told Janet. "Did you know there are clockwork bears now? And a whole new host of unique animals! It's like Fillory itself pops them out when necessary."

It made sense, really. All of it. The clockwork animals would be a new breed formed from the broken clock trees and the animals who'd fought at the end of the world. And the unique animals, well, they were part of Fillorian mythology. You had to have them.

"So you're looking for an adventure?" Jane asked Janet.

Janet nodded. "An adventure and a survey of the land. Two birds, one stone. Maybe even literally."

Plum was laughing. "Oh man," she said as she got more porridge. "We should totally start a club."

**Four Square**

Traveling by Cozy Horse had been wonderful at first. Its name was certainly fitting and Alice had found herself dozing much of the time, curled up on the Cozy Horse's back, leaning against Quentin.

The new land was amazing, she had to give him that. He'd made something intensely beautiful somehow. It was entirely possible that Quentin had indeed grown up, matured, gained whatever he needed to be able to create something full and alive. It did strike Alice that he'd done that with her too, just a bit. Being a niffin had had its moments, to be certain. When she'd been a niffin it had seemed every moment was one of those moments. But it was quite impossible to reconcile the two states of being. As a niffin she hadn't cared that she didn't have feelings like a human being. She hadn't wanted to eat or drink or fuck or sleep. She hadn't needed to and she hadn't missed it. And just after becoming human again? She'd hated it. Her mind had been stuck in niffin mode. Now, looking back on it, yes, it had been amazing, but she couldn't believe how alone she'd been. How angry. How aloof. How unalive. 

It had taken a long time for Alice to realize she just wasn't ever going to be able to settle the whole matter. The best she could hope for was to accept that she wasn't a niffin now and didn't really want to be one, but that she'd also totally embraced it when it had happened. Maybe if she'd had to stay on Earth it would have been harder. It was a lot easier to accept that nothing would ever be like it had been when you were galloping across an uncharted land on a giant velveteen-covered horse. 

Still, eventually they had to stop. They couldn't live off of conjured food and the apples they'd found at the beginning. As it turned out, Quentin had somehow created this whole new world with settlements. Small ones, to be sure, but the people there welcomed them and fed them and sent them on their way. The Cozy Horse bid them a silent farewell after about a month and Alice and Quentin continued on foot. A month after that and they had reached a little village on a riverbank. The people who lived there practiced an odd form of hydromancy that Quentin didn't know, which was fascinating when you considered that he'd created the land that these people lived in.

The thing was, Alice wasn't terribly interested in the hydromancy. She supposed she should be, but she wanted a bit of a break from the purely esoteric. So she'd set about exploring the surrounding area, talking to the people who lived up and down the river. 

"Do you know which way Fillory is?" she asked one young woman who seemed to be more of a trapper than a magician. They'd been asking at every village they passed through with no success. But then, they had just sprung into existence. It was to be expected they might not really know their neighbors yet. 

"That's where the talking animals are, yeah?" the woman asked. The people here had long pointed ears that flopped a little most of the time. Now the woman's ears perked up a bit. "I've heard of them! My pal Asa, he said he met a talking sparrow last week when he was down to the south a ways. Said it was real friendly."

Fillory was near. Near enough that the talking birds had spread this far. So Alice went to Quentin and told him she was going to travel a bit. Maybe once he'd have either whined about being abandoned, or fretted that she was going to leave him. Now he just nodded and kissed her and told her he'd still be there when she got back and to send word if she needed backup on anything.

So Alice left with the trapper, whose name was Lolle. They rode a pair of horse-rabbit animals Lolle called Hoppals. Lolle was quick on her feet and happy to have someone to travel with. She'd apparently always wanted to see the rest of the land. Well, 'always' as far as Lolle was concerned. Alice wasn't about to disabuse her of the notion. And besides, the longer she was in this land, the more complete it felt, as if every moment also filled in more and more of the land's past and history.

They'd been traveling for a week when they crested a hill and saw a group of people camped in the valley below. They carefully made their way down into the valley to see who it was, but Alice had already figured it out. 

"Janet," she said as she dismounted the Hoppal and walked over. There were formalities and all, but Alice didn't really see the need to use them, given that she'd sacrificed herself for Janet so long ago. Janet didn't seem inclined to argue over it. Maybe Fillory was good for maturity after all.

Janet walked up to her. "Cute ride," she commented. "Where'd you come from?"

"New land to the north," Alice told her. "Pretty sure we replaced some of Loria with it when Quentin created it."

"Good riddance," Janet said. "Who's your friend there?"

Alice motioned Lolle over. "This is Lolle. She's from up north. Who do you have?"

"Well, we've got Plum, whom you know," Janet said. Alice nodded a hello to Plum, who nodded back. "And Jane Chatwin. And then there's Aral, who's one hell of a swordswoman, and Julia sent us Fern here. She's a dryad with wanderlust. Julia thought it might be good for her to travel."

"Welcome to the Fillorian Freelance Adventurers League," Plum told her. "Want to join?"

Alice laughed. It was so wonderfully bizarre. Of course she said yes.


End file.
